OnTheIssues interviews with presidential candidates: on Health Care

Paul Adams: Repeal ObamaCare in favor of one-payer system

A: I would repeal Obamacare and replace it with a One Payer system publicly funded and privately provided, primarily by taxing the casino economy of Wall Street. The Declaration of Independence underscores our unalienable right to 'life'. It is rather hard to enjoy life with poor health or no access to health care. Life and Health are one and the same and should be equally enshrined in our Constitution..

Marc Allan Feldman: ObamaCare supports a growing, inefficient & expensive system

A: Strongly oppose. ObamaCare is an effort to take more resources from wider areas of the economy to support a growing, inefficient and expensive system. We need to change our entire approach to health and wellness to encourage private, voluntary organizations to promote prevention of illness and maintenance of health and fitness, access to good basic health care to all regardless of ability to pay, appropriate investment in new technologies, reasonable, appropriate, and affordable long term care with dignity, and hospice and end-of-life care.

Mark Stewart: Heavens no, we can't expand ObamaCare

A: Heavens no, we can't expand ObamaCare. The ACA should be ENDED, along with Medicare, and replaced by the most perfect health care system in the world: the Free Market. Free markets in groceries get us foods from around the world, cheaply, fresh, and (if governments don't interfere) with good labels. Free markets in clothing get us various styles, durabilities, and sizes. Free markets (generally) in higher education give us varied colleges, universities, technical schools, and training academies. They draw from all over the world, still largely unfettered by our government. Health care choice is too important to leave to the government. The perniciousness of ACA is so serious, it would be a wonder how we got here in the first place.

Mark Stewart: ObamaCare has "death panels," but so do private HMOs

To wit: Government "death panels", reduced choice in MDs, higher premiums, higher deductibles, fewer careers due to 29 hour caps, MDs leaving the profession, and fewer raises due to 50 employee caps. Enough said.

"Death panels" sounds incendiary. To be fair, any private HMO has a death panel, defined as decision makers other than you who can withhold treatment. But the HMO that wrongly withholds needed care suffers consequences, contractually and in reputation. The Government death panel has no consequences for its unfair decisions about patients. This dissociation begets the VA scandal.

Jim Hedges: ObamaCare is ok; single-payer would be better

A: maybe, single-payer would be better

Jill Stein: Tort reform becomes unneeded under Medicare-for-All

Stein: The answer is a Medicare-for-All system. Much of what motivates large settlements is the need to pay for a lifetime of chronic care. With healthcare as a human right, you no longer need to go to court to assure coverage.

OnTheIssues: How would you implement that, given that ObamaCare is here to stay?

Stein: New Zealand uses no fault malpractice insurance--there is no requirement to find intention or fault-- and no need to create a villain when dealing with just statistical risks--and they have much smaller settlements. That is something we might want to look into, but the definitive answer is Medicare-for-All. Court settlement is an important safeguard against abuse and incompetence--that right should not be curtailed--but no-fault and Medicare-for-All is the main answer. If there are to be any changes in the way the courts work, the focus should be on speeding up the process.

Jill Stein: Threats like Ebola are threats to public health worldwide

Stein: It could become an issue again with SARS--we live in an age of globalized health. Threats to public health are threats to public health everywhere. We need to pay attention to incredible health injustice and enormous health disparities and address them--or they are going to come back to bite us. We need to ensure a basic level of public health and infrastructure around the world--we need to be doing that instead of bombing abroad and exporting weapons--we should replace the export of goods with the export of health & education & green energy technology. We need to treat the world like we are part of a common human family--which we are.

OnTheIssues: And travel restrictions like Chris Christie enforced for Ebola?

Stein: Travel restrict need to be established by health authorities as a technical issue by people who understand the disease. What Christie did was fear-mongering--entirely what we don't want to do

Roseanne Barr: More federal funding for health coverage

Q: Strongly support

Virgil Goode: Oppose more federal funding for health coverage

A: No.

David Walker: Demographics will require more federal healthcare funding

A: Support. We need fundamental healthcare reform irrespective of the Supreme Court's decision on ACA.

Q: You're referring to the Supreme Court's ruling on the ObamaCare Affordable Care Act argued last week, with a ruling due in June? And you mean you would support a new federal health initiative if ObamaCare's individual mandate is struck down in that ruling?

A: Our healthcare system is currently not appropriate, affordable, or sustainable--our known demographics will require more federal funding. We need to impose annual limits in what the federal government spends in every category except two-- Social Security and national debt--we need to join every civilized nation in the world in placing an annual limit on federal healthcare spending; otherwise it'll bankrupt the country. We've way overpromised and we need to change our payment system.

Rocky Anderson: More federal funding for health coverage

A: Strongly Support

Andre Barnett: Opposes more federal funding for health coverage

A: Disagree, we need to restructure our current system

Andre Barnett: Expand the armed forces

A: Agree.

Robert Steele: Health education instead of regulation

• 50% of every health dollar is waste because of Congressional corruption
• 95% of Medicare costs are unnecessary and imposed by Congressional corruption
• Health is a four-part challenge: healthy lifestyle, healthy environment, natural and alternative cures fully integrated into best practices at all levels, and honest patient and family centered medical and pharmaceutical remediation.
• Health and education should be public services as are fire and police, and individuals and business should have obligations--to be fit, to provide toxin-free environments
• Toxic foods and unhealthy foods should be exposed to the public for what they are--education, not regulation, is the best means of repressing unhealthy offerings

Robert Steele: Opposes more federal funding for health coverage

A: Oppose. Federal programs are out of control and largely corrupt, with over 50% of every dollar shown to be fraud, waste, or abuse. PriceWaterhouseCooper's report, "The Price of Excess," documents this. In addition, because of Congressional corruption, Medicare drugs cost us 90% more than the rest of the world because Congress will not allow negotiation. Health is four-part challenge: individuals must be responsible for their own fitness; organizations must provide healthy environments free of toxins; alternative and nature cures must be well-integrated in all health practices, and medical and pharmaceutical remediation must be both a last resort, and honestly intelligently administered.

Robert Steele: Cut military-industrial complex back to $300 billion a year

A: Strongly Oppose. 4% of the force (the infantry) takes 80% of the casualties (dead and wounded, many amputated, 18 a day committing suicide once released from active duty) and receives 1% of the budget. N Secretary of Defense in recent memory, including the current incumbent, has had the intelligence & integrity to get their job right. We need to cut the military-industrial complex back to a maximum of $300 billion a year, placing emphasis on the infantry and everything in direct support of the infantry, on a 450-ship Navy of many small distributed ships, on a long-haul Air Force that allows us to close all of our overseas bases, and on creating four forces after next, each coherent and capable: Big War Force, Small War Force, Peace & Stabilization Force, and Homeland Restoration Force. The US Department of Defense is completely broken at the policy, acquisition, and operational levels, as is the rest of the government. It needs a leader with INTEGRITY.

Scott Keller: Encourage non-profit hospitals

Scott Keller: More funding for health coverage, but change model

A: Support. I believe that before any funding is sent to the health care industry, the conflict of interest needs to be removed from the equation. As long as doctors and medical research organizations and pharmaceutical companies and so on are dependent upon people being sick in order to earn a living, the health of the patient will be at odds with the health professional's income. New reverse-compensation models, local compensation models, and other innovative approaches to ensuring the above professionals are taken care of while encouraging them to permanently heal the patients and keep them healthy need to be implemented.

Brian Moore: National health care system for all citizens

Health care savings will also be greatly achieved through a more efficient system based on preventive medicine and a financial incentive to providers to keep consumers healthy, well and out of the hospital. In addition, 1600 for-profit health insurance companies will be eliminated, and their exorbitant 35% administrative costs for profits, paperwork, marketing and duplication of services.